


Air Drop

by akire_yta



Series: prompt ficlets [579]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 18:49:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16434863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akire_yta/pseuds/akire_yta
Summary: the-lady-razorsharp asked:Oooh yes, I’m up for BDH John, yes ma'am





	Air Drop

**Author's Note:**

> (i have Opinions about how easily John jet-packed back to Earth in his wingsuit, okay)

No-one had asked, and John hadn’t told them what he was cooking up on the fabbers.  Brains had given him a Look, but Brains sees all and says surprisingly little.  He passed his comments instead through design changes and little additions that mark either approval of or a rebuke for a planned course of action.

John’s wingsuit had come back from repairs with better heat shielding and a long-range scanner.  John had taken that as Brains’ discreet approval.

After all, he thought as he grabbed the handles and started the twisting, rolling suit-up process, Brains saw Scott’s pure untainted idealism up close.  Yet Brains knew, probably better than most, that the world unfortunately didn’t match the dream.

Behind him, John could hear the last echoes of distress and gunfire before the hatch sealed itself.  “EOS?” he asked as his helmet sealed around him.

“Life signs are still present, John.  As are those of the squad.  Are you sure you’re saving the right person?”

For all the drama of her arrival, EOS was surprisingly like Scott in her belief that they help in disasters and accident, and leave the warzones to soldiers.  But John couldn’t leave any call for help unanswered. He couldn’t sit, safe and secure, and hear a single voice cut off in a scream.

These heat signatures were small on his scanners, the voices still with the lingering higher pitch before puberty finally dragged them down.  He called up the map now, overlaid with data gathered from sources he can’t admit having while wearing the patch of International Rescue. “I’m sure EOS.”

“Trajectory mapped.  Cloaking active.  Launching.”  

The rush of speed always took his breath away.  He arched, his trajectory curving around before accelerating him downwards in a long arc.  John frowned, shoulders tight and breath shallow as they accelerated through the clouds towards the glowing dots of his HUD.

Heat signatures betrayed vehicles on the ground, and he gave the slightest twitch to put another hundred yards between him and a chopper that was slowly tracking the terrain from above.

He was hopefully too small to show up on their scanning profile.  If they spotted him, it was all over in every way that mattered.

There was a rock outcropping below that would hide life signs for scanners not as good as his.  John’s smile showed only teeth as he deployed his wings, let friction and physics slow him down, unheard and unseen. He dropped from the rock into the tiny crevasse, the only hiding place in an endless desert.

The smallest of the three was holding a ragged teddy bear, and John went cold.  His suit was good, but it couldn't lift three, even three as small as them.

There was one more button on his new suit that he until now had little call to use.  He looked at the teddy bear and pressed it. The wings closed around him like a suit of armour, plates locking into plates as his HUD went from white to glowing red.  

He held a single finger up to his blank helmet where his mouth was, and the eldest nodded, dragging his siblings back as far into the corner as they could, acting on the universal signal to hide and wait.  

John bent at the knees, feeling the plates move with his movement as a tiny blast of jets got him up on the rock. He crouched, scanning, waiting, a hunching mechanical vulture. The stun-gun’s whine was almost silent as it charged, barely louder as it discharged.

The eldest was smart, took the map John drew into the sand at a glance before kicking it back out of existence. John kept watch as the white dots vanish down the road, threading between the glowing red dots marking danger.

“EOS? Exits?”

“Deploying tether. Get high, I can only jam that helicopter for so long.” John nodded and leapt into the sky.

John watched the earth retreat beneath him as he sat, perched on the edge of the elevator, as it wound its way back into the safety of space.  “Are they clear?”

“The Red Cross has made it to the coordinates I gave them.  A register has just been made for three siblings.  The search parties are a kilometer away. You were not detected.” John kicked his feet idly, 700 kilometers above the earth and still climbing.  “And Scott is calling.  He wants to plan Gordon’s birthday party next week.”

John looked up, towards the shimmering silvery dot of home.  “Tell him I’m in the shower, I’ll call him back in ten.”

“You mean lie?”

“Whatever works for you.”

John leaned back, lying on the top of elevator pod, and let his mind wander and his tense muscles relax in readiness for sliding back into his dutiful, detached role once more.


End file.
